A trip gone awry..

This is one trip that i will remember for all wrong reasons, as the events before, during and after the trip were all far from pleasing. But one should face such incidents once in a while to spice up things. Moreover, it acts as a good lesson for you to learn for your future.

So here we were, a group of 10-11 friends, on that friday Night at Dadar TT, waiting for our bus, for our  trip to Panchavati & Shirdi, a pilgrim centre around 230 kms from Mumbai. We had planned a weekend trip, so that no one would have needed to bunk the office.  In a bid to decentralize my load, i entrusted one of my friends, the responsibility of reserving a railway ticket for return journey in the evening on Saturday. The responsibility he gleefully accepted.

The bus reached late by good measure, but since we were a closely knit group, we did not realize the loss of time, as we were spending our time chatting and joking.  The bus finally showed up at around quarter to twelve and we all boarded the bus. The journey was non nondescript as within an hour’s time we all went fast asleep, as tired we all were by the chores of the day in the office. The bus screeched to halt at around 5.30 in the morning and we all reached Shirdi, a buzzing little town which came to limelight due to the noble deeds of Saibaba, a godly figure now.  We booked a hotel for keeping our luggage and for bathing, resting  etc.

At around 10 o’clock in the morning we had taken our darshan and we were out of the temple, fully contented. Our next destination was the pilgrim centre Nashik, the Panchavati, the Kalaram Mandir and all had occupied my space for quite a long time, i’d been there, but never got a chance to visit those places. So i was thrilled for sure. We reached at around 1.00 clock in the afternoon, and perhaps from then on the difficult phase of our trip began.

We visited a relative of one of our friends, kept our baggages over there,  and then proceeded. We visited Panchavati and other places and reached a temple, Kalaram Mandir, the temple itself is built well with good architecture dating back to 11th century. I took the first click there from my camera. And suddenly, out of nowhere, a cop came and snatched my camera and proceeded back to the police chowki, somebody uttered that photography was not allowed. We could not see any board mentioning the same however. We went into the chowki and pleaded the cop to return the camera. He yelled like a madman, as if we had committed big crime, he told us amusing stories of how terrorists take pictures of such places and then plant bombs. Did he thought, we were terrorists. He however, mellowed a his tune bit, when i told him that i worked for a Central Government Department. But, the cop that he was, he did not relent till we had bribed him a 100 rupee note. He then returned back the camera and we made our way backwards. I felt, quite angry on myself that day, for having bribed someone, so blatantly, and in the premise of the temple. I had noted down the buckle number of the cop, with the resolve that i would make a written complaint. But back in the hustle bustle of city life, the resolve melted somehow.

At around 5.30 pm we reached Nashik Station, the train was scheduled to arrive at 06.00 pm. I inquired with my friend, who had booked the ticket, he had placed the tickets firmly in his upper pocket, he checked the tickets in his pocket and told that dont worry he had the tickets. So we all went to Nashik Station at platform no. 3, to await the train. That day, the security arrangement and the ticket checking drive was on over zeal, i suppose, as everywhere, we saw the ticket checkers in black coats. We had no reason to worry as we had proper tickets was my guess.

The train was scheduled to arrive within next five minutes as it was around 5.55 pm and i got jittery, as there was no indicator showing the train, or any kind of announcement being made about its possible arrival. My friend accompanied me to the board where the status of all the trains were shown. There was no mention of this train number. So finally, i asked my friend for the tickets to verify what the issue was. He handed out to me the ticket quite confidently, that was the last time i saw him as confident, that evening. On close scrutiny, i, to my utter shock noticed that the friend had booked a wrong ticket. He booked the ticket of a train that was leaving from Nashik to Mumbai in the morning, and our train had left for the day twelve hours before we. I was shocked and worried. Not for myself but for female folks who had their parents waiting for them.

Panicking wsa the last option that evening i had. The first challenge was to get out of the station complex, unnoticed and unquestioned. I told everybody, that there was minor problem and we needed to go out of the station. Everybody gave me stares that made me worry a bit more. But they complied. Thankfully, the ticket checkers did not bother to question us or ask for tickets and we came out of the station. I called another friend of my, Nilesh, who was bit more responsible a guy, than the one who had booked the tickets. I told him the scene and informed him that the next train was at 09.30 pm and we had no tickets for it and the train was packed. The train would have served no purpose as it would have reached Mumbai in the dead of the night.  The next best alternative to reach mumbai by roadways. So we inquired with the Autorickshaws around how to reach Mumbai. It was around 06.30 pm in the evening, the sun had started sinking that evening, a bit too faster i noted.. We were told that if we reached “doodh naka” before 7 pm we may get some vehicles that routinely ply between the upper ghats of Nashik to the lower plains of Kasara, which however, still was good 100 kms from Mumbai. But atleast we could have caught local trains plying from there to our homes.

We informed everybody the hard fact, that we had missed the train. We could not face the eyes of the rest of the members. Anyways, we reached Doodh Naka within next fifteen minutes and fortunately got one MUV which noting our plight, spared no efforts to fleece us, money however was secondary aspect that day, time was the main issue.

The journey in that MUV was not especially a notable one, as we all cramped in somehow, and the driver gave us some more nightmares by his acrobatic sytle of driving on that dreadful accident prone road.

Dot at 09.00 pm we reached Kasara and we were happy to see the train waiting to depart at 09.15 pm. We took the necessary tickets and boarded that train. All of us reached home by 1200 midnight. Around two hours late.

After all that happened, i guess, two hour’s delay could have been excused, and everybody did excuse, for as it is said all’s well that ends well.

But, if i ever learn’t a lesson after that was never to hand over work to others, work which you can do yourself.

Wants are unlimited – Lesson Learnt well…

Those were very simple days, when you really did not required any electronic gadgetry to remember the phone numbers or addresses of your friends and pals.  A small pocket sized diary with neatly entered contact numbers alphabetically would solve your purpose. A calculator was all that we craved for during our college days. Mobile phones, ipods, ipads, androids and smartphones were the terms not used then. The first generation mobile phone that we saw in the market in the early nineties was like a wireless walky talky set with a large antenna protruding dangerously outside, many a times to the discomfort of others.

The pager or the text messaging services, with a small matchbox sized module, vanished as quickly as it came, i guess it had a life of about 2-3 years. The owners would feel a sense of pride everytime, they the pager beeped. We, friends were in our colleges, and our past time would be pester friends who had pager with them. A call to the call center guy to send a message with instruction to send the message twice was a routine past time then. The recipient friend, whenever, he would meet would give some angry looks quantifying the magnitude to which he was hassled. But the beep of the pager gave way to the mobile phones.

I longed for my mobile phone, quite a bit, and it was one such pesky advertisement call on my landline phone, that ensured that i would book the mobile phone, the offer made was so appealing that i could but not resist. My phone, the first one was nothing special to mention, just a basic phone. But, boy, didnt i like it then. It was a motorola model. And i used it for quite sometime and i felt satiated and felt that my search for a good phone had ended,

Until i got my LG color phone with good camera and multimedia.  All of a sudden, my old motorola phone started looking a bit older, and today it is nowhere to be seen, I switched my loyalties to this new phone and was all praises for this phone.  It had lovely music, a good handy camera to boast. I felt that may be first time i was wrong, but my search for a good mobile indeed ended here.

I was caught on wrong foot however, when the markets filled with touchscreen phones and suddenly i found that using my LG phone troublesome, my fingers started itching a bit more while typing smses, perphaps it itched for a new touchscreen. My LG phone was just  8-10 months old and i had no strong alibi to purchase a new phone. So as a shortcut and a short term remedy, i got a cheap chinese touchscreen phone just for fun, used it for a while, and finally got my touchscreen phone, a classy model, a costly phone, with rich multimedia, a 3.5 mp camera with flash and all i needed. It was a Java phone and yes, finally i felt that i did not need a new phone anymore. I went to many trekks and trips and used this phone for getting crispy crystal clear pictures and it worked marvellously. I could access internet, listen to songs, record videos and play games, it was gravity sensitive mobile and could play shake games. So i was all but happy with the phone.

Then suddenly, the market got flooded with android phones, the new operating system installed in mobiles by internet giant, google. One could see the whole market flooded with android phones and stuff android market offered. It had solution to just everything, you could use your phone as your mini laptop, it had word, it had ms office, it had games, it had rich media contents and just everything once could crave for. Suddenly, my java phone looked like it belonged to stone age and so i had no other option but to get my android phone.  I got one, am using it right now and like everytime i feel and hope that this will be my best phone ever. It has just everything, it has google maps, travel guide, speedometer, temperature teller, barcode reader, office softwares, games, music and all that sony can squeeze in this little wonder. So i feel that my hunt for my best phone is over. But i know, i am wrong. For records this is my seventh phone in around three years.

The technology keeps on changing and we keep on craving for newer ones, its just human to do so, but, in the process, we suffer from bouts of frustrations when we are unable to achieve what we set out for, we simply miss out simple joys of lives and make our life a bit more complicated. Life is  simple,  but we complicate it just like most of you, i am sure,  will do in the sum below.

Try to solve it without calculator and do not scroll the mouse below.

if 1=5

2=25

3=625

4=390625

5= ??

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Ans : If 1=5, 5 should be equal to one. Lets make our lives a bit simpler friends  I will begin with myself 

Passionate Search

Sometimes, it so happens with you, it happens with me atleast, that some old tune, some old scent, just keeps lingering back of your mind, and when you remember that thing, the entire cycle of events connected with that particular thing keeps rotating in front of you. Something similar happens with me, albeit, quite frequently, i guess. There are many a tunes, jingles that remembers me of some old memories associated with those things.

One such thing thing that had literally pestered me for quite a few years now is an old marathi song. A song that i liked so much, when i was a small school going kid. Our school then, assembled at 07.15 in the morning and we would have to leave our house at around 06.50 am. So, reluctantly though, i had to get up by 06.00 in the morning those days. And as any lazy kid, i would yearn to sleep for those extra few minutes. Those days devotional songs used to play on radio. I am not aware of the scene today, as i guess radio now is nearly out of fashion. And this particular song used to be the flavor of the season then, and almost routinely at around 05.50 in the morning this song used to play. By the time the song ended, i had to get up. Somewhat reluctantly, but when this song used to start, i used to feel to have the luxury of lazying around for atleast 5-6 minutes more.  Soon the song became an habit.  Quite surprisingly during my years of growth, i somehow lost track of the some, the song too faded into oblivion.

All of a sudden, as if old memories got a new lease, i started remembering the words of that song, the tune etc. Like a fumbling kid, recollecting tables, i somehow, was able to remember one stanza of the song. So i thought of searching for the song. First visited some CD Shops, but nobody could provide me the needed relief. I mass mailed my friends to help me find the song, i even posted the same on Facebook. But what i got in return was mails from friends that they have not heard of such a song. Then i thought, Internet could help. My problem was that the stanza was somewhere in between the song, and i had forgotten the beginning lines, I am not a music buff to remember the musician, singer etc. I googled the stanza and found n number of result thrown up on my screen, only to my discomfort. Somehow, but, i was able to know that the song was sung by Suresh Wadkar. Then i scrambled through list of songs sung by this great singer. But, he was a versatile singer and he sung in many Indian Languages and there were hundreds of songs. Somehow, my gut feeling helped me, i was able to zero in on one movie title, i was damn sure that the song belonged to that movie.

Now, that i got the singer’s name and movie name, i renewed my efforts to find the song. In the search i got the entire lyrics of the song and was sure that the elusive song that had hidden down the layers of memory and from the material and virtual world as well, was now not that elusive for me.

With renewed vigour and continuous backup, i tumbled through huge maze of data thrown up on google. Links that would guide me to number of music sites, some real, some fake ones, some full with virus and spywares, some sites hackers jobwork. Some were mere advertising portals. My experience of internet helped me to sift through the piles of sites.

All of a sudden, one fine evening to my amazement, i finally found the song!!!! And what a joy it was, the joy was doubled, doubled because i found the song which was till now elusive for me. Secondly, my efforts over Internet paid off.

That day and for few days thereafter, like a fool, i listened and listened to the song unabated. Sometimes, my likeness for these small stupid things are looked upon by my peers as sheer stupidity. But, its my own way, i feel bothered by petty things in life.  Even I too feel the futility of my efforts, but the journey, the impatience, the joy at the end of it belittles everything else.

I am happy with the song that i am relishing upon nowadays, and till it goes in the oblivion once more time, i shall continue enjoying it.

The Mad Mad Race…

Next Day a driver reports for duty, after performing long gruesome duty last night, he asks for a short distance trip. He was denied the same. The driver walks away, boards an empty bus and just zooms it away, he drives on the wrong way, kills around eight innocent people, damages countless number of private & government vehicles, the police gives him a chase. His madness stopped only when he was stucked up in a snarling traffic jam in a narrow street.

After inquiry, it was found that the normal looking man, who performed his duties well for last twelve long years suffered from psychiatric problems, he was undergoing treatment which he left halfway down. This real incident happened some 10-12 days before at Pune, near Mumbai. The incident was first of its kind on this side of the planet, we hear about such cases quite often in the west, stories of mindless people going on shooting spree, killing hapless people. In one case i remember a shooter killing school kids in school. This forces me to think, are we all not, ticking human time bombs, waiting to explode ???

Sometimes, i feel, we all are mad !! the degree to qualify may vary, which in turn gives us a label of being a normal sane person. But somewhere deep down, we all are insane. Some mad after achieving some goals, some mad for gaining more and more richness, some mad for other worldly pleasures, some to please their egos. But mad, we all are, to some extent. We wisely cover our madness and label it as career oriented, upward mobility and other fantastic terms. But the madness is the same. Sorry, if somebody feels offended, mad that i am

Yes, a bit of  madness is required, but it should be to a certain extent.  This madness made Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein. This madness made Newton, a Newton.  Your Madness should be your motivating factor,  it should not be a depressing one.

We all carry a loads of anxiety, worries,  frustrations with us.  The world may see a very clean, sauve, sombre face of us, but beneath the mask lies real us. Modern life, and the demands of it, have only worsened the story. Has’nt it ? We all are running an endless mad mad race, a race which has no end, race to achieve targets, race to earn more, earn more for our better future, better future at the cost of losing our present.

Has this recklessness and stress not resulted in increased incidents of heart troubles in our youth. Youths in their prime are dying of sudden heart attack. Leaving behind their uncherished and unfulfilled dreams of a better tomorrow. Some fifteen twenty years ago the deaths of youngsters due to heart ailments were unheard of, surely these twenty years gap coincides with the liberalization of economy that government has undertaken. The situation becomes even more critical in developing country like ours, without much backup systems, the public health system is in disarray, the psychological health of a person is never even given a passing thought. Like in the case of the reckless driver above, the organization, a huge public transport organization accepted that they had no systems in place to check the mental fitness of their employees. Coupled with the fact that people find it very unacceptable to visit a psychologist. A belief most people carry is that only mentally unstable people need to see them.

Life has become more stressful, we don’t get time for ourselves, time to sit for a while, time to pause, enjoy smaller joys of life. I remember one gentlemen travelling in our train compartment quite often. He was a hefty gentleman, well dressed in formals with tie and would stand somewhere, and would travel very silently, but all of a sudden he would start talking to himself and it seemed that he was undergoing some very huge level of stress in his office, he would talk about office, targets, would plead apology to boss, and would talk in a way as if he is in conversation with someone. If a fellow traveller, touched him or asked him what was wrong, he would again get normal, but only for a while.

Are such people not a ticking bomb. For they carry with them their world, world that is not so rosy after all…

So be mad my friend, but, be mad for good and do press that Pause button for a while.

The eternal wait..

It was one such weekend, i was longing for,  had thought of a perfect saturday plan, planned not to do anything, just lie on the bed till atleast eleven in the morning and lazy around. Afterall, was working continously even on weekends from first of January this year. Not all the work was Official, but, engaged still i was since the beginning of this year. I said to myself, i really deserved this weekend’s break.

Nothing unusual happened to put spokes in my plans the day before, i.e. friday, atleast till four o’clock in the afternoon. A fax arrived from just nowhere from our headquarters that afternoon intimating that our top boss, the topmost bureaucrat was visiting the city and would visit the Office. No Sooner did the fax arrived, the office geared itself up in near war mode.  ”Efficient” employees like myself are the ones to suffer these attacks as they are the ones who are utilized the most. I sometimes envy the not so “efficient” ones, who may or not may be efficient, but have surely mastered the art of  dodging responsibilities. What is more annoying is that this lot of people, not only dodge their responsibilities on the shoulders of not so smarter souls like me, but they enjoy watching us toil with almost devilish grin, a grin that underlines how smarter they were.

So, after the review meeting, it was decided that a presentation be prepared, it was almost 4.34 by now and the process of collection of data from various departments, compiling the same into a presentable presentation was not smaller a task. Given the fact that this presentation will go through atleast three bosses from juniors to senior ones who would suggest modifications & re-modifications.

By the time the first raw presentation was submitted a peon came with circular  intimating that the Saturday Weekly Off was cancelled and that everybody would have to remain present in the office by 8.30 am.  Almost in tandem, the boss sitting next to me checking the presentation told that i would have to sit late today. I laughed myself. It was a case where man proposed and god disposed.

So the task of preparing the presentation continued, till late in the evening, till around 7.45 pm, to be precise.  Tired and totally drained i returned home at around 10.30 pm that night. Just gobbled some food and went to bed, not forgetting to set the alarm clock on to ring at 6.30 in the morning the next day. I went to bed that night in no time.

The next morning the alarm ringed and i almost unwillingly and cursing the arriving guest work up and reached the office at around 8.30 am. The work was in full swing, the cleaning work, every department were giving final touches to their figures, preparing reports, giving final look to what they had prepared. A scurry of activities were going on in the otherwise slow and steady paced government office.

Our bosses went to the guest house to receive the top boss, this boss was infamous for his temperamental and aggressive nature and everybody were aware of his nature, hence, each one of them were getting themselves as prepared as they can to answer any query.

It was around 11.00 am, one of the boss once again came to give a final look at the presentation and suggested few more additions in the presentation, those were aptly incorporated. By that time a phone call came that the Bureaucrat had changed his mind and would be visiting our office first, actually visit to our office was second on the itinerary.  We all rushed to the conference room to make arrangement for the Projection of the presentation and it was said that the Bureaucrat would be here within next half an hour.  With heart losing its pace, we all waited for this gentlemen. All last minute preparations were in place, the bouquet, the photographer everybody were in place, for this elusive guest.

Half an hour passed but the guest was nowhere in the sight. Periodic updates were being received from the bosses who were with the top boss. In all this one thing was notable, one boss was at his cool, coolly carrying out this routine work, he said, that the top boss would not visit the office.  One phone call came informing that the boss has now sticked to his earlier itinerary and is visiting the other office.  Soon news came that this boss was checking almost everything, he did not spared even the toilets, telephonic instructions from the bosses came to be careful. Sweepers rushed to the toilets to ensure it was also sparkling clean.

By now it was afternoon, and we all broke down for much deserved lunch break.

We were now as prepared as we were, like young school going kid fully confident to face exam, each one of us were ready to face the top boss. So we were awaiting with our guest.

Since there was no signs of the arrival of the much sought after guest, i thought of leaving the conference room and went back to my cabin to check my mails.  I was feeling lazy and bit of tired and sleepy. At 3.40, i called up the inquiry counter downstairs to get update of the guest, the reply was that he cancelled his visit to our office. I was feeling like being ditched. For two long days, i worked untiringly, i sacrificed my much needed break for just nothing.  However, the news of drubbing that the other office received sent a sight of relief. For sometimes these  bureaucrats are whimsical and prejudiced, some come with the only objective to fire, to show who is the real boss, and unnecessarily one gets dressing down for no reason, i’ve seen many a bureaucrats in last sixteen years of my job.

Sometimes, i really feel that because of such whimsical bureaucrats, the progress, in our country had to wait, just as i was made to wait for my elusive break

Fabricated Crisis

It was that time of the year when there was not much of work to work in office, as such it was one such boring day in office, when we all were lazying around, idlying around with computers, playing some games, intermitently checking mails, both official & personal. However, when, you have nothing worthwhile to do, time passes with snail pace. Everything just stood in its place that day.

At around 2.30 pm in the evening, when we were back from our lunch break. A call came on the Office intercom, one boss in hurried voice, inquired about another boss, whether he was in my room. I answered in negative, hearing his concerned tone, I inquired what had happened. The boss said that the person in question was nowhere to be seen, his cell was out of range and he heard that he fell down on the road with an heart attack while he went to the Bank during the lunch break. The boss added a note of disclaimer though, he said he was not sure whether what he heard was true and hence he was checking up with all the concerned divisions where he usually visited.

Suddenly, things electrified, I told my colleague, who was playing some brick games on the pc, the breaking news, shocked, he too, joined me and we went outside the room and saw colleagues searching for the boss on that floor. His room was empty, with the creepy fan revolving with disconcern as ever. One colleague even checked the toilets. Soon the crowd of around 10-15 staff members, after confirming the absence of the boss on the second floor assembled on the first floor, where the scene was of similar chaos. People were acting on their own instinct that day. Some peons rushed to the road to check up whether the boss had indeed collapsed. One of the peon further rushed to the bank to see whether the boss was in the bank.

Just everybody came back with no clues. Increasing the fear, the curiousity and the tension. In between just everybody devoutly tried calling the number of the boss, which was continously out of range.

Everybody assembled near the chamber of our Director, to give him the bad news. We all started guessing games, as to what exactly might have happened. However, even the hushed tone in unison was loud enough, for the Director inside to overhear.

All of a sudden, we heard a familiar voice “kya bhai, kya baat hai sab log ya ikattha kya kar rahe hai? “, which mean, what’s the matter friends, what are all of you doing together here. The voice was of the same boss whom we were told had collapsed on his way to the Office. We all were in a state of confusion. Now, who will tell him that he had collapsed on his way to office that lunch hour. Somehow, somebody assembled enough courage to tell the entire happening. The boss who heard the tale was equally shocked to hear. He went to the boss who broke the story. Nonchalantly the boss, welcomed him and said, ah, here you are, and I thought you fell down while coming from the bank. I was concerned about your health, now that your wife has entrusted me the responsibility of taking care of your health. And he erupted into wild laughter. The poor boss was red faced. He could not express his protest to this cruel joke. Nobody had any inkling how to react. The prank played was a notoreous one to say the least. The person on whom the prank was played was equally hurt. But, he did not register his protest, atleast verbally.

The good side of the story was that the entire office suddenly came together in that period of fabricated crisis. It had done so in the past, the camaraderie was displayed aplenty only during crisis, and all the times the response was unequivocal, of which I feel proud.